Imperial Drag - Zodiac Sign

Imperial Drag was formed in 1994 in Los Angeles by keyboardist Roger Joseph Manning Jr. and vocalist-guitarist Eric Dover following the dissolution of their previous band, Jellyfish. Dover, who had served as a touring guitarist for Jellyfish during the promotion of their 1993 album Spilt Milk, partnered with Manning to create a new project emphasizing a heavier, glam-influenced rock sound distinct from Jellyfish's psychedelic pop style. 
The band's lineup was completed with bassist Joseph Karnes and drummer Eric Skodis, both of whom had also been part of Jellyfish's live ensemble. This core quartet began rehearsing and developing material in Los Angeles, focusing on a retro-glam aesthetic with gritty guitars and theatrical elements. Early activities included the recording of demos to showcase their evolving sound, which blended '70s-inspired rock with Manning's signature keyboard flourishes. 
By 1995, Imperial Drag had started performing live, honing a ferocious stage presence that contrasted with Jellyfish's more polished approach. These initial shows helped refine their setlist and attracted attention in the local scene. The band's demos and live energy generated interest from major labels, leading to a signing with Sony Music's Work Group imprint in 1996, which paved the way for their self-titled debut album.
Jellyfish disbanded in 1993 following the release of their second album, Spilt Milk, which peaked at No. 164 on the Billboard 200 and struggled commercially amid the dominance of grunge rock in the early 1990s. Internal tensions had been building since their debut Bellybutton tour, exacerbated by frustrations among band members; original guitarist Jason Falkner departed due to feeling sidelined in songwriting decisions by co-founders Andy Sturmer and Roger Joseph Manning Jr., while bassist and Roger Manning's brother Chris Manning quit seeking a less stressful lifestyle. By early 1994, as demos for a potential third album progressed, Sturmer and Manning's personal conflicts and diverging artistic visions—Sturmer gravitating toward introspective singer-songwriter styles akin to Van Morrison, with Manning uninterested in pursuing that direction—ultimately led to the group's dissolution. Manning later reflected on the rift, suggesting that therapy might have helped address their issues: "If I’d known back then about therapy and the option of people getting counseling, I’d have suggested that Andy and I enroll in it." 
In the wake of Jellyfish's breakup, Manning and touring guitarist Eric Dover retained core elements of the band's psychedelic pop sensibility, including ornate harmonies and melodic sophistication, but pivoted toward a harder-edged rock sound to distinguish their new project. This evolution marked a deliberate departure from Jellyfish's more polished, Beatles-inspired aesthetic, incorporating heavier guitar riffs and glam influences to create a rawer, more aggressive vibe. Manning described Imperial Drag's self-titled 1996 album as essentially "a heavier version of his old band," reflecting a conscious effort to channel their shared history while adapting to a post-grunge landscape. 
The decision to form Imperial Drag as a quartet excluded Andy Sturmer, allowing Manning and Dover to explore fresh creative territory without the constraints of their prior partnership. Early conceptual discussions emphasized amplifying the guitar-driven aspects of their sound, drawing from 1970s glam rock and hard rock precedents to inject urgency and power into the psychedelic foundations inherited from Jellyfish. This shift not only addressed the internal dynamics that doomed Jellyfish but also set the stage for Imperial Drag's distinctive identity, with Dover stepping into a prominent vocal and guitar role alongside Manning's keyboard contributions.  From: https://grokipedia.com/page/imperial_drag_album 

Emigrah - Emigrah Gra

Emigrah is a band formed by three artists from the Tricity area of Poland, united by their fascination with world music. The band presents an intercultural dialogue, using songs collected during their travels to various parts of the world; through music, they strive to understand different cultures while simultaneously discovering their own identity and roots. The group presents music as an element that is not subject to the laws of time or geographical divisions, and with a wide range of possibilities, it combines what at first glance seems incompatible. Through their music, the band proves that there are no barriers between religions, regions, and languages. One of the characteristic elements of Emigrah's music is traditional singing interwoven with the sounds of instruments from diverse origins. The band's work also features a great variety of rhythms – from triple rhythms characteristic of Polish traditional music, through odd Balkan rhythms, to inspirations from Arabic maqams and Indian konnakol. Since 2019, the group has been searching for new sounds through a unique combination of instruments from around the world, presenting traditional music in original arrangements. The band is an ambassador of both Slavic and Eastern music.  Translated from: https://teatrwoknie.pl/wydarzenia/emigrah-koncert-przed-two/

 

Traffic - Dear Mr. Fantasy / Forty-Thousand Headmen / Withering Tree / John Barleycorn

 Traffic - Dear Mr. Fantasy

 Traffic - Forty-Thousand Headmen

 Traffic - Withering Tree

 Traffic - John Barleycorn

"I knew it wasn't just a good piece or a good track for a record," Traffic drummer and lyricist Jim Capaldi once said of "Dear Mr. Fantasy," the pseudo-title-cut from the band's kaleidoscopic debut LP. "I knew it was going to be a real milestone-type piece." His hunch was spot-on.
No, the British quartet never cracked the pop charts with the spiraling psych-rock song. (In fact, they never even issued it as a single.) But the six-minute "Fantasy" was designed more as a deep, mind-expanding bong hit than a quick joint puff: Steve Winwood's bluesy howl and the group's live-in-the-room exploration tapped into the same jam-sprung freedom flourishing at that time on America's West Coast.
Fittingly, since much of Traffic's early repertoire reveled in whimsy, "Dear Mr. Fantasy" originated from a doodle. "I'd drawn this character playing a guitar, with puppet hands instead of his own hands," Capaldi recalled in a video interview celebrating the 50th anniversary of Mr. Fantasy in 2017. "I wrote a letter next to it: 'Dear Mr. Fantasy, play us a tune.'"
At the time, the band -- Capaldi, Winwood, multi-instrumentalists Dave Mason and Chris Wood -- were holed up at Sheepcote Farm, a rural cottage in Berkshire, England, owned by baronet Sir William Pigott-Brown, a friend of Island Records founder Chris Blackwell. Experimenting with weed and LSD, and living among the filth of their own dirty dishes and laundry, the young men cooked up much of Mr. Fantasy at this ragged sanctuary.
"There was no running water, there was a well and no electricity,” Winwood told Louder Sound. "Blackwell took the gamekeeper’s cottage down the lane so he could make sure we rehearsed and wrote material. It was a place where we could make as much row as we liked – and we certainly did.”
During one ordinary vice-filled afternoon, "Fantasy" emerged. "I was asleep upstairs in the cottage, and I heard this nice little bass line going and some guitar," Capaldi said in the documentary. "I woke up, went down — we'd jam all time of the day, and we'd all take breaks, do whatever."
"I found that they'd written a song around the words and drawing I'd done," he told Louder Sound. "I was completely knocked out by it. Chris wrote that great bass line. We added some more words later and worked out a bigger arrangement too."
Armed with a batch of songs that sprawled from psych to blues to soul to Beatlesque Indian nods, Traffic eventually moved to London's Olympic Studios with producer Jimmy Miller, with whom Winwood had collaborated as part of his previous band, the Spencer Davis Group.
Miller was crucial in capturing the song's free-flowing vibe on tape, which they only achieved after scrapping the traditional recording booths and tracking as a live four-piece: Winwood on electric guitar and vocals, Mason on bass, Wood on organ and Capaldi on drums. A surprise fifth member was Miller, who augmented the groove by rushing from the control room to lay down some extra percussion.
"We were in the middle of a take and there's a part where the tempo changes — it jumps — and I look around, and Jimmy Miller's not in the control room," engineer Eddie Kramer told Mix.
"The next thing I see out of the corner of my eye is Jimmy hauling ass across the room, running full tilt. He jumps up on the riser, picks up a pair of maracas and gets them to double the tempo! That, to me, was the most remarkable piece of production assistance I'd ever seen. They were shocked to see him out there, exhorting them to double the tempo. Their eyes kind of lit up. It was amazing."
"Fantasy" thrives on that anything-can-happen energy: Capaldi's thumping kick drum accents and tumbling fills, the double-time grooves, Winwood's Jimi Hendrix-like solo, that tempo-shifting finale. From 1967 onward, it became a staple of Traffic's live show -- performed more than any other song in their catalog.
And kindred spirits followed suit onstage. Grateful Dead introduced a faithful cover in 1984, a showcase for keyboardist-singer Brent Mydland, and continued to perform it up through 1990. (Jerry Garcia even joined Traffic for a version during their 1994 reunion tour, documented on the live set The Last Great Traffic Jam.) Several other rock legends have paid tribute, including Hendrix, Crosby, Stills & Nash, mid-'90s Fleetwood Mac (featuring a briefly tenured Mason), Peter Frampton and Eric Clapton (alongside Winwood).
"Dear Mr. Fantasy" "was done on impulse with practically nothing worked out, because it was almost jammed," Winwood told Rolling Stone in 1969. "The initial spirit of the whole thing was captured on record — which is very rare. That was one of the things, because it’s not specifically an outstanding melody or an outstanding chord sequence or anything. It’s basically quite simple. They’re very simple lyrics and they’re repeated three times. ... It wasn’t half so strong after we’d done it. It was time that gave it a lot of meaning."  From: https://ultimateclassicrock.com/traffic-dear-mr-fantasy/

John Barleycorn is a musical adaptation of a traditional poem from the old west that basically railed against the ludicrousness of prohibition. The joke was that all those "brave" teetotalers who claimed to be doing the work of the Lord were actually hypocrites and were ruining that work, because, as the lyric sums up in the end, no one can do the rudimentary work necessary to build and grow the land "without a little barleycorn." 
The liner notes to John Barleycorn Must Die explain: "Between the years of 1900 and 1910, Cecil Sharpe collected a number of songs, John Barleycorn among them. The many versions of this song are said to have come from Oxfordshire, Sussex, Hampshire, Surrey and Somerset, and there are estimated to be between 100 and 140 versions. The earliest known copy is of the age of James 1 in the Pepoysian collection 1465 printed in black letter by H. Gorson (1607-1641). the popular interpretation is the effort of the people to give up the alcohol distilled from barley but in the last verse:
"And little Sir John with his nut brown bowl
And his brandy in the glass
And little Sir John with his nut brown bowl
Proved the strongest man at last...'
But there are many interpretations.
From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/traffic/john-barleycorn

Crystal Jacqueline - Your Bartered Bride

Between her work solo and aboard the Honey Pot, it sometimes feels as though there’s something new by Crystal Jacqueline every time one turns around. Of course she’s not quite that hyper-active, but it would scarcely be an imposition if she was.
Among the handful of independent artists who are truly at the top of their game right now, Jacqueline (and co-conspirator Icarus Peel) are almost singlehandedly flying the flag for a breed of psych-infused underground folk that only passingly reflects the values of its historically-revered forebear; that grew out of, not into, such vintage currents, and has been pushing it boldly forward ever since. And she’s certainly the most prolific, as this packed double album reveals.
Seventeen songs (and not a single second of filler) open out across an astonishingly broad palette. Opening with the rocking locomotion of “Your Bartered Bride,” calming a little for “Crumble”; shifting into the pensive “Yesterlove”; pausing for “Love”… and every one throws open a different window, be it the Animal percussion that punctuates “Akhbar”; the scything atmospheres of “Faerie Tears”; the brittle echo of “Your Dry Ghost.” And, of course, the chilling opening line to “Spanish Horses” - “last night as I prepared to die.”
All of which is patiently building up to “Await the Queen” itself, a twelve minute epic that unfolds like a medieval ballad, Jacqueline’s vocal poised between spoken word and melody, while the accompaniment relays lushly-arranged sonic stories of its own. And still Jacqueline’s performance is so all-enveloping that the guitar solo that cuts in around the nine minute mark really has its work cut out to match her.
It’s a breathtaking piece of work, possibly Jacqueline and co’s most self-defining opus yet, and an impossibly far cry from her (perhaps) better-known guise as a superlative interpreter of sundry folky-psychy covers. Even at the end, your ears are calling for more, and the closing “The Lost Song of Sleep” serves much the same purpose as “Goodnight” did on the Beatles’ White Album, slowly bearing you back to earth from the shattering peaks that preceded it.  From: https://www.goldminemag.com/reviews/album-reviews/reviews-hawkwind-crystal-jacqueline-maxs-kansas-city-mortlake-book-club-year-country-kris-gietkowski-sad-lovers-giants-thinking-plague-sex-clark-five-ba-robertson/

 

The Soulbreaker Company - Blood That You Wish

When I received my last package from Alone Records/The Stone Circle at the beginning of 2008, this was one of the included discs and it was my first meeting with The Soulbreaker Company. After I listen to the first seconds of the opener 'Elliptic Tunes', I thought that this Spanish band would follow in the footsteps of Orquesta Del Desierto, due to the mariachi horns and this special latin vibe. But suddenly a funky rhythm pushes the song in a complete different direction and the second song 'You Shouldn't Cry' shows what's really going on here. The Soulbreaker Company display a mastery of various 70's rock styles with this eleven track excursion into mind expansion. This six guys combine hard progressive, straight heavy rock, hardrock and funk to one powerful unit and they can also write fantastic songs as for example 'Blood That You Wish', or 'The Man That You Betray', but it's really impossible to find outsanding tracks, because the entire album is on a level of highest quality. All cuts are well constructed with additional help of twelve guest musicians, so that you can hear female background vocals, flute, harmonica, trumpets, saxophone and more what makes this album to a sheer listening pleasure, because it works so well. 'The Pink Alchemist' doesn't sound pompous and here's a dirty edge, so that the bluesy roots of this band are always to hear. The vocals are clearly executed by Jony Moreno, who's vocal style dominates the whole feel of this album, what's not that bad. Throughout the musicianship is superb and the production rich and deep.  From: https://www.cosmiclava.com/articles-and-more/record-reviews/t/the-soulbreaker-company-the-pink-alchemist-cd 

 

The Stray Birds - The Bridge

If The Stray Birds were going to make another album, there was only one way it would happen: together. The idea was at once a challenge, an ultimatum, and a survival mechanism for a band at the crossroads. Write the record collaboratively, or don’t write it at all.
“I felt like the only way forward was to write this album together and to be very intentional about it,” says fiddler/guitarist/banjoist/vocalist Maya de Vitry. “It wasn’t easy at times, but there’s something really sacred that we’ve built and grown between the three of us, and I was unwilling to move on without chasing it as far and as deep as we could.”
The result is ‘Let It Pass,’ The Stray Birds’ fourth album and their most powerful, personal, and cathartic collection yet. The record charts the trio’s tumultuous emotional journey in the years since the release of their acclaimed 2016 album ‘Magic Fire,’ a period which saw de Vitry and fiddler/guitarist/mandolinist/vocalist Oliver Craven end their romantic relationship while choosing to continue their musical one. Along with bassist/banjoist/vocalist Charlie Muench, the pair had to face down an uncertain future and reevaluate what it meant to create art together.
“The band was a huge part of all of our lives,” says Muench, “and suddenly there were all these question marks around it. How and why would we go on? The only thing that was clear was that if we were going to continue, it wasn’t going to be the same.”
Over the course of what totaled to nearly a month of dedicated writing sessions, the trio sat around a table and, for the first time, created an entire album from scratch. Where previously the band had been a showcase for the songwriting of de Vitry or Craven, here all three members brought fragments of melodies and sketches of verses, often generating music and lyrics together in real time. Every phrase, every word, every melodic turn and chord change had to travel through their collective imagination in order to make it to the page.
“I wanted everybody to experience wrestling with our collective state of mind and the uncertainty that goes into writing music together,” explains de Vitry. “It’s a delicate thing for people to create together like that, but seeing each other in our moments of frustration and in our creative breakthroughs created even more trust and possibility than we’d ever had before. It enabled us to peel everything back and make the most honest music we possibly could.”
Honesty and beauty have long been hallmarks of The Stray Birds’ catalog. Originally hailing from Lancaster, PA, the band first broke out in 2012 with their self-titled/self-released debut, which landed among NPR‘s Top Ten Folk/Americana Albums of the Year and earned the trio major festival performances everywhere from MerleFest to Scotland’s Celtic Connections. They followed it up in 2014 with ‘Best Medicine,’ which debuted at #2 on the Billboard Bluegrass chart, and returned two years later with the Larry Campbell-produced ‘Magic Fire,’ which hit #1 and earned an avalanche of critical praise. NPR hailed the band’s “warm harmonies” and “pristine playing,” while Pop Matters heralded the album as “an essential step forward,” and Folk Alley called it “masterfully crafted.”
With the addition of drums and outside musicians for the first time, ‘Magic Fire’ represented something of a new chapter for The Stray Birds, and that freshly fortified sound became a jumping off point for the exhilarating performances and infectious hooks on ‘Let It Pass.’ Drawing more than ever before on electric guitars and rhythmic propulsion, the record channels the dynamic energy of the band’s live shows, capturing raw, emotional performances that are equally as meticulous as they are spontaneous. Producer Dan Knobler (Lake Street Dive, Erin Rae) brought the band into the famed Sound Emporium studio in their adopted home of Nashville, where he pushed them to embrace the grittier, more rocking side of their songwriting and to close the daylight between their studio and stage identities.
“Dan was really onboard with our need to write the album collaboratively as a trio,” says Craven, “but he also got really involved with our rehearsals and was very hands on when it came to bringing the songs to life. We got together with him and our drummer, Dominic Billett, several times to really work through all of the arrangements in a way that was new for us.”
Unlike with previous records, the band also took the new material on the road to Folk Alliance for a series of intimate live performances, which provided a unique opportunity to step inside the songs and truly live them before recording began.
“Playing the new songs live was an important step for us,” says de Vitry. “As soon as you’re performing a song in front of an audience, it becomes all about communication, about tapping into the lyrics and the feeling. It requires another kind of vulnerability, and it was something we needed to do completely on our own terms.”  From: https://www.yeproc.com/artists/stray-birds/

The Four Tops - Bernadette

Four Tops lead singer Levi Stubbs delivers a passionate vocal on this song, urging his girl to stick with him and ignore the advances of other men. The song was written by the legendary Motown team of Eddie Holland, Lamont Dozier and Brian Holland (Holland-Dozier-Holland), who wrote most of the hits for the Four Tops, including "Baby I Need Your Loving" and "Reach Out I'll Be There."
So was there really a "Bernadette"? Yes, and more than one. Dozier explained to Hits magazine in 2003: "There were three Bernadettes, and they were all different girls. We sorta kept that to ourselves that we all had our own Bernadette. We always said, we'd never bring a girlfriend's name into the songs. We had this hidden thing when the name came up, so we didn't say anything. So at least two of us were thinking about the Bernadettes we knew."
In Dozier's case, "Bernadette" was inspired by his unrequited love for a girl when he was 12; a "beautiful Italian girl with eyes for somebody else."
Levi Stubbs stood out as one of the most exciting singers on the Motown roster, with a talent for putting his own stamp on a song. He thrived on songs that were difficult to sing, which made him a good fit for Holland-Dozier-Holland.
In a Songfacts interview with Lamont Dozier, he said: "Levi was a good, dynamic type of singer and he had to stretch singing 'Bernadette' and 'Reach Out.' He had to develop his own feel because although we gave him a demo to practice from and show him the way the song should go, he had to deliver and he had to be dramatic. He took that upon himself, bringing out that dramatic feel of those songs."  From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/the-four-tops/bernadette

 

Three Merry Widows - All That There Is

Last weekend, the core quartet of instrumentalists of Three Merry Widows gathered inside Room 2 of Utopia Studios, getting together for two days of marathon rehearsals in advance of their April 5 reunion show at Delmar Hall. Physically absent was vocalist Alice Spencer, though her voice was looped into action through the miracles of modern technology; and auxiliary player Kevin Buckley, whose violin features prominently on their new album, I Was the Moon, and who will guest with the group next month while also playing with his own opening band, Grace Basement.
On-hand were original-era Widows Sean Garcia (vocals and guitar), Brian Simpson (guitar), and Charles Shipman (bass) along with drummer Danny Hommes, who joined the band in advance of their single, prior reunion show, which happened back in February 2015. Since that show, the band undertook one of the most interesting, unusual recording projects in recent St. Louis music vintage, as the band pieced together songs from their early ’90s run at Sawhorse Studios. Over two years, they traded digital demos, tied in via Skyped feedback sessions and otherwise used every possible tool they could to coax their long-awaited second album to life.
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In conversation with the band during a break, it was Shipman who provided the most stark comment about the experience, noting that he’d not only missed seeing Spencer during the recording process, he has not even been in the room as her since February 7, 2015, when the band played their one-off reunion gig at The Ready Room. For a band that once existed as something of a five-headed organism, that reality is kinda shocking and, today, only Hommes and Garcia reside in St. Louis.
Of the album’s lengthy birth, Spencer says over the phone with understatement that “it was an unusual way to approach it. I certainly have never done a record like this before, where all of the tracks were pretty much done. Normally with Three Merry Widows, the process was about doing everything together, everything was done live. We’d track live and build on that foundation. Somehow, it really worked. I don’t know where the credit for that lies, but the tracks that the guys laid down had so much energy that it felt really natural. When I went in to lay down my vocals, it felt like we were all in the same room together. That speaks to the bond that we have, the history, the relationships that we share and that musical bond. I don’t know how to explain that the album sounds like we’re all together, though I recorded some of it 1,000 miles away in a different studio.”
True enough, Spencer tracked some vocals with Andrea Perry at Cicada Studios, in Austin, with engineer Jason McEntire helming the intermittent weekend sessions at Sawhorse. “It’s not ideal,” Shipman figures, “but it wouldn’t have happened at all without this technology. During it, I thought all the time of how I couldn’t believe the number of steps involved.”
A bulk of the work was a matter of stitching together all the disparate pieces, which, of course, needed both technical expertise and good ears, brought by the band, McEntire, and mixer Brad Sarno. But as important was the simple idea of how to best interpret songs that were written over two decades ago.
Simpson believes that “I think we felt open to do whatever we wanted to do (with the songs). There was nothing that we were so tied to that we couldn’t change it. The songs had been there so long that we could explore them a bit more.”
Garcia adds that “this music was conceived and written so long ago that, in some ways, it was easy coming back to it with a more mature mind-set.”
For those unfamiliar, the group formed in St. Louis in the late ’80s, coalescing into the classic lineup when Garcia joined founders Shipman, Simpson, and drummer Matt Albert; he then convinced Spencer to join the band and TMW’s sound, intra-band dynamics, and popularity shifted dramatically. Playing a host of St. Louis venues, the band established a growing fan base in St. Louis before decamping to Boston in the hopes of gaining additional exposure to record labels. Their gambit paid off, with TVT Records inking the band to a deal that would see the release of Which Dreamed It? in 1991. With the band back in St. Louis by the time of the release, the group would tour regionally, sharing the stage with a variety of national acts. (In the interests of disclosure, this writer shared housing with several band members during this TVT period.)
The relationship between the label and the band would sour, though, and even as the group had prepped the material for a second album, the lack of a lead pop song became a sticking point, with the band eventually ceasing operations rather changing up their songwriting aesthetic. The dozen songs that make up I Was the Moon are essentially the same ones that would’ve made up a 1993 follow-up, and they sound like a natural, organic follow-up to the band’s debut.
While a few cuts were traded via cassettes (and later mp3s) by the most hardcore fans and were played onstage in the early ’90s, these songs primarily existed only in the minds of band members for over 25 years. Live, they were given that test spin in 2015.
Spencer says that going back to the material then was unique, as “some songs were very foggy, and others felt like just yesterday, with instant recall. The arrangements are tricky, because we always change them for live show segues. I was so grateful to work with a new drummer for the reunion show, because we had to work on things a lot. I needed that refresher course. The biggest trip for me is singing these lyrics. You look back on them and I know I wrote this one about an argument with so-and-so, or I can remember exactly what we were doing as people with another.
“It’s such a surreal experience,” she adds, “playing music with people after, well, we’re looking at about 30 years, I guess. They’re strong feelings, because this is stuff that we wrote as kids. But there’s so much love and respect between us. It’s amazing to get to go back and play with people and share these songs again. I’m glad we finally got to make the record.” Shipman adds that “maybe because this album’s been in our lives all this time, playing these songs doesn’t feel like a strange, new thing. For me, these are the songs now, this is what we are now.”  From: https://www.stlmag.com/culture/music/three-merry-widows/

 

Crosby & Nash - Carry Me

"Carry Me" was written by David Crosby, who also takes the lead vocal. He describes it as a "song of transcendence," that feeling when you've left your body and feel like you're floating above the world, looking down. "'Carry Me' is a love song," he told Songfacts. "That's all it is. It's a really, really good love song."
The third verse makes a strong case for assisted suicide. It's about Crosby's mother, who was ravaged with cancer but wasn't allowed to die on her terms. In the liner notes to the CSN boxed set, Crosby wrote: "She was lying in hospital, dying of cancer, and wanted to go while she still had some dignity. She asked me to do it, set her free - coup de grâce the French call it. So I said, 'Hell, yes.' I learned how to do it from a doctor friend, and I was perfectly willing to do it, I'm not ashamed to say that. But she found out if she didn't die on the hospital and doctor's schedule, they'd conduct an autopsy and charge me with murder. So she had to go through an extra couple of months of desperate pain. She was a good lady. She taught me music, and was always writing poetry. I loved her a whole lot. She really nailed me when she said she felt like a bird with weights tied to her feet, that if somebody would just untie them she could fly. What an image - I couldn't ignore it."
Graham Nash sings the harmony vocals with Crosby. The song was released on their 1975 collaborative album Wind On The Water, the second they made together. With Stephen Stills, they formed Crosby, Stills & Nash and released landmark albums in 1969 and 1970 (the second with Neil Young added). But there was a lot of conflict and competing interests in the group that kept them from recording. Their next album didn't appear until 1977. In the interim, they released solo albums and others with various permutations of the group. Crosby and Nash got on well in the '70s but fell out in the '80s when Crosby's drug problems became a major issue. That's James Taylor on acoustic guitar (Crosby played the electric). The other musicians were session players: Craig Doerge - piano, Leland Sklar - bass, Russ Kunkel - drums. Crosby and Nash had no trouble getting their famous friends to help them out. Jackson Browne, Carole King and Levon Helm also appear on the album.  From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/crosby-nash/carry-me

 

Tod - Kumbala

Formed in 2010 by long-time friends in senior year of university in Makassar, "tod" have not only been blending Indonesian traditional music emphasis with electronic beats and ambient into their arrangements but also capturing multifarious of Indonesian mythology and history into the lyrics.
"tod" consists of Dian Mega (vocal), Fadly FM (bass-vocal), Ade (synth-vocal), Anca Kurrek (drum), Nugraha (guitar), Reza Enem (guitar, producer).  From: https://soundcloud.com/todmusik

Tod, from Makassar, the epicenter city of South Sulawesi, is a traditional electronic soundscapes band with a touch of folklore and a 'pop' genre. They offer a dynamic and unique sound of authentic Southeast Asia. The band emphasizes electronic beats and ambient sounds in their arrangements while also incorporating various aspects of Indonesian (especially ancient Bugis folklore) mythology and history into their lyrics.
Their brand new EP titled 'Silaga' captures the mythological nuances of South Sulawesi with a pop-leaning approach. The EP also features strong social criticism in its lyrical content. The band's comeback is definitely worth checking out. S.E.A. music enthusiasts, don't miss this beautiful sound of Southeast Asia.  From:  https://www.facebook.com/kambairecs/posts/tod-from-makassar-the-epicenter-city-of-south-sulawesi-is-a-traditional-electron/470994849078468/ 

 

Ghost Dance Collective - Sunshine

Tell us a bit about the band:

We’re an Edinburgh-based 4 piece called Ghost Dance Collective, we've been around since 2015 and are purveyors of the type of music that exists on the border between indie pop and psychedelia. We support the workers' struggle, regularly watch JFK, our favourite number is 32 and are all spoken for. We've got an album out, we're almost ready to release our second album (just finalising the artwork), and have begun the process of recording album 3.

What has changed for you as an artist during lockdown?

Well, the biggest impact has been that it's slowed everything right down as we've been unable to record or practice songs we've been working on, and we've certainly missed the buzz we get when we're all together. On the other hand, it's given us a chance to focus on writing new material, so hopefully when the restrictions are lifted we can get the creative juices flowing real quick.

Are there any tips that you can give to other artists for the remainder of the lockdown, anything to help keep them sane, busy, productive etc.?

Keep in touch and have a laugh with each other, practice the hell out of your instruments, grow a beard and read the beard.

Can you recommend any artists that you’ve found during lockdown?

Ross has mostly been rediscovering some of the bands he listened to back in the day like Pavement, Veruca Salt, The Breeders, Lilys etc Liam has been listening to a lot of '50s/'60s/'70s jazz, dub and roots reggae, Delta and Chicago blues, late '60s psychedelia.

From: https://www.newmusicsocial.com/home/stay-home-interviews-black-market-karma-ghost-dance 

 

Besvarjelsen - The Cardinal Ride

Hot on the heels of the release of their sophomore full-length Atlas on Magnetic Eye Records, Swedish forest rockers Besvarjelsen have launched a new driven and steaming track ‘The Cardinal Ride’. 
Singer Lea Amling Alazam reveals: “First time I heard the riff for this song I knew I wanted to go punk and messy with the melodies and lyrics.  I had been reading ‘The Seven Deadly Sins’ by Karin Boye and the book was lying on the table as I was listening to the track. The first line that came to mind was ‘a rollercoaster of the seven deadly sins.’
Life is a fucked-up rollercoaster and you never know how the path will turn next, so I wanted to celebrate the ugly parts of life. We live in a glass house society, in which people want to portray themselves as if they have their shit together and be on the right side of life, while most of us are messed up, confused, horny bastards with no self-control.
“It’s okay to be a fuck-up. It’s okay to run through life not knowing where the hell the road is going. But if you are the type of person, who always gets super drunk and cries at parties, maybe it’s time to go and see a shrink. Because chaos is fun, but taking mental health seriously is even much cooler. See y’all in hell!“  From: https://themidlandsrocks.co.uk/besvarjelsen-the-cardinal-ride/

Elton John - Friends / Can I Put You On

Elton John has since lamented the fact that three very good songs ended up on the Friends soundtrack rather than his own albums and, truth be told, Madman Across the Water or Tumbleweed Connection would have been even better albums with Friends, Honey Roll and “Can I Put You On” on them. That last song at least earned a reprise on the live 11-17-70. I would’ve loved to have heard live versions of “Honey Roll” and “Friends,” but you can’t always get what you want. At least you could get two of these three songs on a single rather than shelling out for the entire soundtrack. “Friends” drew comparisons to Elton’s other big ballad, “Your Song,” although one is a timeless classic and the other is just a good melody with clever lyrics. Personally, I felt Paul Buckmaster’s arrangement was a bit over-the-top. “Honey Roll” might have been a scorcher on stage. The studio version still generates some heat, including the rare appearance of the saxophone, an instrument Elton used sparingly despite his apparent affection for Elton Dean.  From: https://progrography.com/elton-john/elton-john-friends-1971/ 

Luscious Jackson - Angel

 

Jill Cunniff and Gabby Glaser first met as feral teens roaming New York City’s East Village in the early ’80s. The girls were music-obsessed—equally enamored of both punk and early hip-hop—and even though they were basically fresh-faced babies at the time, they’d try to sneak into nightclubs and, if that didn’t work out, then they’d just hang around outside and try to catch the music that way. “We met on the corner of St. Mark’s Place in 1980,” Cunniff recalled to The Face. “Two 13-year-old girls all punked up. I looked like a dreadlocked bag lady and Gabby looked like Chrissie Hynde.”
They were rabid fans of female punk pioneers The Slits as well as bands like Bad Brains, and they’d hit up spots like Tier 3, the Mudd Club, and Danceteria. Then, as they got a little bit older, they hatched up a rather ingenious plan: creating fake hand stamps for the clubs they were dying to get into. In fact, in on this hand-stamp racket were Mike Diamond, Adam Horovitz, and Adam Yauch, future members of the Beastie Boys but, back then, just your average young hooligans pining for the nightlife. Eventually, the teens began wandering the city together in a pack, causing harmless trouble.
Soon, Cunniff and Glaser’s friend Kate Schellenbach, another underage club kid, joined the boys as the drummer in their first teenage incarnation of the Beasties Boys. “It took seeing the Slits onstage for me to realize that being a musician was something I could do,” Schellenbach remembered. “But when I joined the Beastie Boys, we never talked about the fact that I was a girl. Music wasn’t as segregated in those days. Everything was mixed up.” Meanwhile, Glaser and Cunniff both took up guitar as teens, writing songs in their respective bedrooms.
Later in their twenties, when Cunniff, Glaser, and Schellenbach formed their own punk and groove-laden band Luscious Jackson along with their friend Vivian Trimble, they would wrestle with their status as an all-women group, particularly against the backdrop of Riot Grrrl and the ’90s music media’s obsession with “Women In Rock.” What’s more, their continued friendship and alliance with the Beastie Boys would be both a blessing and a curse, garnering frequent comparisons as well as a nickname: “The Beastie Girls.” 
It was in my own feral pack-traveling teenage years that I’d see Luscious Jackson open for the Beastie Boys on their Ill Communication European tour in 1995. That cold February in Germany, Frankie, Leah, Hillary, and I crammed into our friend Daniel’s tiny VW Jetta and drove hours to the concert stadium in Aschaffenburg, bopping to our own carefully curated mix of punk and hip-hop all along the way.
But let’s rewind the tape back just a bit. After years of club-hopping as high-school kids, Cunniff, Glaser, and Schellenbach went their separate ways for university. Glaser went to film school and then studied in France for a bit, while Cunniff and Schellenbach both studied fine arts in San Francisco. After they graduated, they moved back to New York and landed entry-level jobs, which they now refer to as “the pantyhose years.” “The pantyhose years,” Trimble recalled to i-D. “You can’t afford any nice clothes, so you go to a thrift store and you end up looking really weird.”
It was at one of these gigs—a “hell job” teaching English at an adult education center—that Cunniff met Trimble, who was born in New York but had been raised in Paris, and who had only recently moved back to her birth city. Cunniff and Glaser had recently formed a band, and so they needed a keyboardist to play samples at their inaugural gig. Trimble gladly accepted. Meanwhile, Schellenbach, who had been drumming for the Lunachicks, allowed herself to be lured away and recruited into her old friends’ band.
The women stumbled upon their band name one night while watching ESPN’s SportsCenter and hearing a sportscaster mispronounce old-school basketball player Lucious Jackson’s name as “Luscious.” To them, “Luscious Jackson” sounded undeniably badass. 
The band then wrapped up an EP titled In Search of Manny (1992), which featured an epic cover photo of one of Glaser’s mom’s old boyfriends, a ’70s-looking dude manspreading with his shirt unbuttoned to his navel and a beer can at his crotch. For the most part, Manny was comprised of demos Cunniff and Glaser recorded with a sampler in their friend Tony’s basement, with Trimble and Schellenbach contributing to a couple of last-minute tracks. The EP would be a precursor to their signature sound, combining elements of punk, funk, hip-hop, disco and pure pop.
By that point in 1992, the Beastie Boys had clearly reached an explosive level of fame, and so Luscious Jackson approached Mike D with Manny and asked him if he knew of a label that might be interested. He came back to them with the suggestion of putting it out himself, and thus Manny became Grand Royal’s first release. The band’s full-length debut Natural Ingredients would follow, along with a spot on the Lollapalooza tour, then Europe with the Beastie Boys, and an eventual arena tour opening for R.E.M.
Meanwhile, throughout their budding success, it became commonplace for everyone to ask Luscious Jackson what it was like to be women in a band. In a 1994 MTV spotlight, Cunniff emphasized the band’s shared womanhood as a songwriting asset. “We all recognize the importance of arrangement—and that’s something that I’ve noticed is really good about women players,” she mused. “They can listen to the whole of the song and say, ‘Oh, I shouldn’t play on this part. Let me just drop out here and listen to the whole.’ And a lot of male players, they want a solo. We have, like, this thing against soloing—it’s not good for the whole of the song.”  From: https://albumism.com/features/luscious-jackson-debut-album-natural-ingredients-album-anniversary

Ellesmere - Another World

Ellesmere is a project masterminded by Italian multi-instrumentalist Roberto Vitelli. You may have come across them, as their last album, Wyrd, caused a bit of a stir in prog circles at the end of 2020. Latest release Stranger Skies, in many respects, carries on where Wyrd left off, but with a couple of significant differences.
Of course, stylistically, we still have the recognisable influences from the usual classic prog suspects, so clear influences from Genesis, Yes, Crimson, VDGG et al, but where Wyrd was obviously Roberto plus a myriad cast of prog royalty, Stranger Skies has much more of a band feel, and hangs together with much more cohesion as a result. There is a clear core band, which is Roberto himself on keys and bass, Matthias Olsson (Anglagard, White Willow) on drums, Giacomo Anselmo on guitar, and John Wilkinson (Mama, Swan Chorus) on vocals. It is Wilkinson who makes the most difference, as this album sees much more of a vocal approach to the songwriting, and this makes the band seem more accessible and the songs more memorable. Where Wyrd was dazzling instrumentally, Stranger Skies is more direct. Sure it still has the classic prog elements which so impressed before, but now it seems more channelled, more focussed, and is all the better for it.
The album is split into two distinct halves. The first ‘side’ comprising four tracks linked by a theme related to a cold world, whilst the second half has two longer pieces depicting an alternative warmer land, and both can be seen on the striking Rodney Matthews cover. Northwards opens proceedings, fronted by a cinematic overture which wouldn’t sound out of place in a fantasy film; it’s all very Harry Potter, but makes a good intro to the song proper. A driving riff and hook laden verses – apparently, we are heading Northwards to the North Pole! Wilkinson’s voice makes the Genesis comparison inevitable, and even the promo blurb suggests that Trick of the Tail was a big influence, and there are clear Genesis-isms on much of the album, but nothing that strikes me as ‘stolen’, just a stylistic similarity. Tundra continues the Wintery theme with some tasty warming guitar work from Anselmi, whilst Crystallised has a very nice 12 string intro before introducing a very famous guest, the very easily identifiable David Jackson with his unmistakable sax sound. I could listen to him all day, and getting him onboard shows the quality of this project, as I’m sure he is much in demand. Arctica concludes the sub-zero suite with an energetic jazzy workout somewhat reminiscent of Yes. Again, the song is memorable and melodic, but with plenty of instrumental interest. Despite the obvious influences, Ellesmere manage to make a pretty good job of making their own mark.
Side two opens with the title track, and here the composition is allowed room to grow and develop, with a slow building prog edifice taking shape, held together with John Wilkinson’s vocals, but interspersed with longer instrumental passages, keyboards and guitar leading, ably supported by John Hackett on flute. There are epic organ interludes, and as the guest list includes ex-Flower King Tomas Bodin, he may well be responsible. No matter, whoever it is, it sounds suitably monumental, especially given some quite prominent bass underpinning from Vitelli himself. His brooding runs have Chris Squire writ large, and that’s no criticism. This track is one of the best longer form pieces I’ve heard this year. Long enough to stretch out, but not hanging around long enough to bore, and with a rhythm which keeps you alert to its intricacies.
Final track Another World again features Jackson, and is a concluding tour de force, with a chugging riff, swelling verses, keyboard theatrics, wondrous lead guitar, and that sax driving the melody. It eventually slides easily back into a reprise of Northwards, nicely bookending the album in a most satisfying way. The piano outro touches on the theme from the opening overture, and just sounds perfect. Overall, this has to be one of those rare albums which I find myself drawn back to over and over, and which I still find compelling after many listens. Vitelli has managed to draw a star cast, but has had the sense to stick to a core band for the basics, and it’s a winning formula, especially spearheaded by Wilkinson’s voice, which is a unifying force. A plethora of guest singers wouldn’t have had the same cohesion, so full marks for sticking with the vision.  From: https://theprogressiveaspect.net/blog/2024/04/29/ellesmere-stranger-skies/

Solstice - Live at The Stables 2023

 Solstice - Live at The Stables 2023 - Part 1

 

 Solstice - Live at The Stables 2023 - Part 2

 

 Solstice - Live at The Stables 2023 - Part 3

 

On September 2nd, 2023, Solstice sold out the iconic venue built by jazz legends Sir John Dankworth and Dame Cleo Laine in 1970, something they view as a career highlight. The night was recorded and is now available as a full concert film (plus photo gallery) or as audio, and it is this which I am now playing. The band are the same as the previous two studio albums, namely founder Andy Glass (guitar), Jess Holland (vocals), Jenny Newman (fiddle), Peter Hemsley (drums), Robin Phillips (bass), Steven McDaniel (keyboards) plus two additional singers in Ebony Buckle and Gwen Taylor. Apart from the three singers, this line-up has been together for some years, having released 'Spirit' in 2010.
It is now 40 years since 'Silent Dance' came out, although I must admit to not hearing it until 10 years later, after I had already reviewed 'New Life'. Solstice are included on ProgArchives as Neo due to where they have come from, but if they were up for inclusion now I can see there being a battle with Crossover, as the band has in many ways moved from what they were and created a sound quite unlike any others in the scene. The fiddle has always been an important part of the music, and Jenny knows when to take the lead or when to take a break, the keyboards are often a backdrop as opposed to a driving force, while the same can be said for Andy who is more than happy to take a back seat at times, riffing hard at others. The whole band is designed to keep the female vocals front and centre, bringing in prog, pop, rock, folk and other influences to produce a highly polished performance. Jess is a real find, being a real performer as well as singer, and having two others with her to provide vocal harmonies in a live setting allows for more passion and depth.
We have been fortunate enough to have two studio albums, from the same line-up no less (which is somewhat unusual for the band) and given the way they are playing some high-profile gigs let us hope they have enough time to record another one soon. This is a wonderful demonstration of great prog from a band who for some strange reason have never really been given the acclaim they so richly deserve.  From: https://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=85168

 

 

Agam - The Ascension

In July 2011, I stood in a serpentine queue outside Hard Rock Café on Bengaluru’s M.G. Road. Inside, there was barely any space to move, as the crowd pushed and shoved through the room to find an inch to stand. But as lofty keys built anticipation and Carnatic vocal melodies made way for the first guitar riffs to cut through the air, everyone began craning their neck towards the elevated stage with mesmerized focus. We had all jostled to watch Agam unleash their take on traditional South Indian songs, a set infused with hints of Sufi and a tribute to master composer A.R. Rahman, an early supporter of the band. It was the first time I got to experience the full force of the band that has been steadily building their legacy since 2003 — taking the familiarity of Carnatic compositions and Malayalam folk songs and preserving their spiritual essence while also slamming on percussive power, towering prog guitars, sublime vocals and even violins.  
At the time, Carnatic progressive rock — a fusion that Agam continue to champion even today — did not really exist. Even the band was still trying to find their footing and do justice to the tag. Sure, the likes of Motherjane’s Baiju Dharmajan were leading the way, but Agam leaned into it completely — interpreting ragas and compositions by poet-saint Thyagaraja, while also nodding to prog greats like Dream Theater, and peppering it with a bit of South Indian folk.  
“I think our behavior as a band was also shaped by how the scene shaped us,” vocalist Harish Sivaramakrishnan says when we speak over a video call. “Like, if the scene remained as awkwardly disjointed as what it used to be, then it would have been a very different story. But I think the whole purpose of playing music got solidified because we got a great audience.”  
From then to now, if there’s anything that’s constant, it’s that Agam have drawn audiences from across demographics, from ages 8 to 80. From the open-minded Carnatic music followers who count thalams on their fingers to prog rock and metal fans who want to headbang and behold the intricate and heavy rhythmic shifts — you’ll see them all at Agam’s shows.  
Formed in Bengaluru between 2003 and 2007, just as they were transitioning from college to work life, vocalist (and back then, violinist) Harish Sivaramakrishnan and drummer Ganesh Ram Nagarajan had just begun jobs in the city’s software industry (naturally). Keyboardist Swamy Seetharaman had a few more years of work experience (“He was the only one that had money,” Sivaramakrishnan jokes) and guitarist T. Praveen Kumar had just landed a tech internship. Seetharaman was not just a band manager and catalyst for Agam (Sivaramakrishnan likens him to the manager and confidante character of Mangalam in the 2003 coming-of-age Tamil film Boys, essayed by the late great Tamil comedian Vivek), but also remains a key songwriter in the band to this day.  
Seetharaman recalls lucidly how, in May 2005 in Bengaluru, they met at a South Indian restaurant in Indiranagar’s 12th Main. “I still remember that I crossed the signal, I met Harish and we went to a studio,” he says. A digital audio workstation called Paris was at their disposal and Agam first began recording music through “analog recording” and jamming. “I would say I’m a firm believer in energies and how you sort of resonate with people. When I met Harish and Ganesh, it was just that energy that was carrying forward,” he adds.  
With a lineup that included bassist Vignesh Lakshminarayanan and percussionist Sivakumar Nagarajan at the time, they recorded songs like “Lakshiya Paadhai” and “Mystical Aabheri.” Seetharaman says that it was around then that they decided to go “all in.” It led to them winning the 2007 televised music competition Ooh La La La, where they were discovered by A.R. Rahman. In a retrospective to mark the release of Arrival of the Ethereal, Rahman said in a video message, “Very few bands have a belief in an identity, and that too from India. I find Agam one of those—a very strong identity […] They make their sound an experience.”  
For Sivaramakrishnan, being part of Ooh La La La — the project that launched Agam into regional acclaim in South India, and even caught some national attention thanks to Rahman — was almost like getting the whole nine yards treatment that independent bands rarely got. “There would be a backline that you could rig your gear to, proper amps and a decent P.A. That was a big premium at that point in time,” the vocalist says. And, they got to play their own songs, a limited opportunity at a time when independent music festivals and platforms were far and few. “An added value was that potentially, A.R. Rahman would come and listen to you,” he points out. For Seetharaman, it was a watershed moment to believe he could make music, especially bolstered by the likes of Rahman, who appreciated his lyrics. He says emotionally, “[It was about] making people believe in themselves and giving that little nudge, saying, ‘Hey, I see something in you.’”  
Agam went on to cinch bigger wins and gain wider exposure. And, although their day jobs took much of their focus for a few years, they also began chipping away at what would become their seminal debut album The Inner Self Awakens, which came out in 2012.  
There’s no band quite like Agam. Yet, their story is stitched together with moments that reflect Indian independent music history’s enduring willingness to adapt. Guitarist T. Praveen Kumar, for example, was originally a keyboardist during the Ooh La La La phase.  But during a 2008 gig in Chennai, he picked up the guitar, inspired by bassist, college senior and music club regular Aditya Kasyap. Before Kasyap was playing in the band, bassist Vignesh Lakshminarayanan had a guitar that he lent to Kumar just before this Chennai gig, and their then-drummer Nagarajan asked him to “fill the sound” on stage.  
“I think I was learning the guitar even as the band was playing live,” Kumar admits, looking back. “If you go back and look at some of the early videos, [there are] a lot of bum notes on the Carnatic scale of playing. I think the entire band was patient. But I should say I picked up the guitar with the band and continue to [grow] as much as possible throughout the journey.” From prog riffs to Carnatic guitar fretwork, Kumar and Kasyap on bass now comprise the riff machine that you can hear on songs like “Over The Horizon,” “The Silence That Remains,” “The Celestial Nymph” and more, a sound they built together with then-guitarist Jagadish Natarajan.  From: https://rollingstoneindia.com/agam-band-journey-cover-story/